1、Robert F. KennedyDay of Affirmation Address at Cape Town University1delivered 6 June 1966, Jameson Hall, Cape Town, South AfricaMr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice Chancellor, Professor Robertson, Mr. Diamond, Mr. Daniel, and Ladies and Gentlemen:I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affecti
2、on for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land wh
3、ich has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America. But I am glad to come here - and my wi
4、fe and I and all of our party are glad to come here to South Africa, and were glad to come to Cape Town. I am already greatly enjoying my stay and my visit here. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people of all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion, including th
5、ose who represent the views of the government.Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - principles which embody the collective hopes of men of good will all aro
6、und the globe. Your work at home and in international student affairs has brought great credit to yourselves and to your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship with this organization.And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Roberts
7、on, who first extended the invitation on behalf of NUSAS. I wish to thank him for his kindness to me in inviting me. I am very sorry that he can not be with us here this evening. I was happy to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with him earlier this evening. And I presented him with a copy
8、of Profiles in Courage which was a book that was written by President John Kennedy and was signed to him by President Kennedys widow, Mrs. John Kennedy.This is a Day of Affirmation, a celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom. At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is
9、the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups and states exist for that persons benefit. Therefore, the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society.The firs
10、t element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech: the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and forest; the right to recall governments to their duties and to their 聽 obligations; above all, the right to affirm ones membership and all
11、egiance to the body politic - to society - to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our childrens future.Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape mens lives. Everything that makes mans life worthwhile - famil
12、y, work, education, a place to rear ones children and a place to rest ones head - all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protec
13、ted and preserved only where government must answer - not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race, but to all of the people.And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to
14、act against its people, so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, but also no interference with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties on an ordinary citizen by officials high or low; no restriction on the freedom of men to seek education, or to
15、 seek work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all that he is capable of becoming.These - These are the sacred rights of Western society. These were the essential differences between us and Nazi Germany, as they were between Athens and Persia.They are the essence of our differenc
16、es with communism today. I am unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the State over the individual and over the family; and because its system contains a lack of freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is characteristic of a totalitarian regime. The way of opp
17、osition to communism, however, is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual human freedoms. There are those in every land who would label as Communist every threat to their privilege. But may I say to you as I have seen on my travels in all sections of the world, reform is not commu
18、nism. And the denial of freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.Many nations have set forth their own definitions and declarations of these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet th
19、e great ideals have constantly recalled us to our own duties. And with painful slowness, we in the United States have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice of freedom to all of our people.For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice
20、and discrimination based on nationality, on social class or race - discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and to the command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: “No Irish Need Apply.“ Two generations later President Kennedy became the f
21、irst Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nations progress because they were Catholic or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents s
22、lumbered in the slums - untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens,
23、and to help the deprived both white and black, than in the hundred years before that time. But much, much more remains to be done. For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the law; and the violence of the d
24、isinherited, the insulted, the injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and of Watts and of the South Side Chicago.But a Negro American trains now as an astronaut, one of mankinds first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the
25、 benches of our court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize2 for his nonviolent efforts for social justice between all of the races.We have passed laws prohibiting - We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in empl
26、oyment, in housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of centuries - of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and degradation and pain.So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside all of us. We are committed to peaceful and
27、 nonviolent change, and that is important to all to understand - though change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.And most important of all, a
28、ll of the panoply of government power has been committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact. We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of gover
29、nment. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.We recognize that there ar
30、e problems and obstacles before the fulfillment of these ideals in the United States, as we recognize that other nations, in Latin America and in Asia and in Africa, have their own political, economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the elimination of injustices.In some, there is conc
31、ern that change will submerge the rights of a minority, particularly where that minority is of a different race than that of the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions that they can make and the leadership that they can provide; and
32、we do not believe that any people - whether majority or minority, or individual human beings - are “expendable“ in the cause of theory or of policy. We recognize also that justice between men and nations is imperfect, and the humanity sometimes progresses very slowly indeed.All do not develop in the
33、 same manner and at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others - and that is not our intention. What is important, however, is that all nations must march toward in
34、creasing freedom, toward justice for all, toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all of its people - whatever their race - and the demands that the world of immense and dizzying change that face us all.In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over
35、 oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced migrations of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high wa
36、lls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man - homes and factories and farms - everywhere reflecting Mans common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications brings men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becomes the concerns of
37、 all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which is the root of injustice and of hate and of war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ends at river shore, h
38、is common humanity is enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin.It is - It is your job, the task of young people in this world, to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man.Each nation has different obstac
39、les and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world, I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York,
40、the racial inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve to death in the streets of India; a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo; intellectuals go to jail in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on
41、armaments everywhere in the world.These are different evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use
42、 knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.It is these qualities whi
43、ch make of our youth today the only true international community. More than this, I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human f
44、reedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress - not material welfare as an end in/of itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to p
45、ursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would all be proud to have built.Just to the north of here are lands of challenge and of opportunity, rich in natural resources - land and minerals and people. Yet they are also lands confronted by the greatest odds -
46、overwhelming ignorance, internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and were exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad traditions of the West; they are hoping and they are gambling their progres
47、s and their stability on the chance that we will meet our responsibilities to them to help them overcome their poverty.In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play an outstanding role, and a role of leadership in that effort. This country is without question a preeminent repository o
48、f the wealth and the knowledge and the skill of this continent. Here are the greater part of Africas research scientists and steel production, most of its reservoirs of coal and of electric power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical development and world science. T
49、he names of some are known wherever men seek to eliminate the ravages of tropical disease and of pestilence. In your faculties and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men and women who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.But the help and the leadership of South Africa or of the United States cannot be accepted if we, within our own country or in our relationships with others, deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our own borders, if we would h
